The Other Side
by kelsey01
Summary: Student reporter Eva Richards doesn't know why the greasers fight, and she doesn't care, but her latest assignment will force her to go and find out. Now she just needs to convince them to talk to her.
1. Chapter 1

S E Hinton owns The Outsiders.

* * *

The morning sun was still low in the sky and I squinted into it as I drove through the North side of town, on the look out for something open at 7.10am.

Outside the DX an open sign turned in the breeze and I pulled in.

My sister had called me earlier. She was crying, in the background my nephew was crying. I cringed the way I always did when I was reminded of her baby, of her life.

"We're all out of formula," she said. I didn't understand how a person could realize at six in the morning they were out of formula when she knew she had a baby to feed, but if my sister was half as smart as everyone thought she never would have gotten knocked up to some army boy.

Now her husband was gone, deployed to Vietnam, and she was stuck out here with her baby.

I pulled into the almost empty forecourt of the DX. A truck was filling up, a blond boy leaned against it dressed in a work shirt with his hand on the pump.

He looked over as I got out of the car.

"I'll be with you in minute, miss," he called out.

"No gas, thank you," I said. I flicked a hand toward the shop. "I'm just picking up milk."

I recognized him from my year in school. Sodapop Curtis. I hadn't seen him around in a while, but I still heard girls in class talk about him. They said he'd dropped out, he had to support his family. They said it like it was something romantic.

No one said it like it was a surprise anyway. For the greasers it was nothing unusual for them to stop turning up to school one day. It was someone like my sister everyone whispered about.

I hated those days, of hearing the voices falling silent as I walked past girls in the hallways. At least my sister didn't have to face them, she was called into the principals office and told to leave as soon as she started showing.

I put the milk down on the counter and waited for Sodapop Curtis to come back in and ring it up.

"Sorry about the wait," Sodapop said, coming in and slipping behind the counter.

I could see why half the girls in my school day dreamed about him, he sure was good looking, but I didn't ever want to fall in love. I'd seen where it ended up. I'd seen my sister crying on her kitchen floor, watched her unravel in pain while the ambulance came too slowly and the man she'd married at eighteen was away crawling through a jungle.

"It's alright. Just the milk."

He grinned at me, took the note I held out.

"Ain't you Belinda Richards's sister? Eva?"

I felt that wince again at the mention of my sister. She was the smart girl, the girl everyone thought would be known for getting into a fancy college, not for getting pregnant.

But I smiled back at him, straightened my shoulders. "That's right, though it's Belinda Hudson now."

He looked at me again. "I think we had math class together, last year?"

Math was never my strongest subject. Hadn't appeared to be his either. I remembered him and one of his friends sat down the back of the class and joked around most of the time.

"I think I remember the one or two days you were there," I said, and then regretted it.

He dropped out because his parents died after all.

But he just laughed. "Bet old Miss Johnson sure didn't mind the day's I didn't come."

He looked over at the door as someone else walked in. Johnny Cade. I knew him from school too, though he'd never said two words to me, or anyone else outside of his gang of friends.

He was sullen and dark haired, the opposing half to Soda as he came and leaned against the counter, eyeing me with a distrustful expression.

He often turned up at school sporting fresh bruises. He looked as if he spent all his weekends fist fighting, and there was a good chance he did.

"Hey, Johnny, how you doing?" Soda asked.

Johnny hopped up on the counter and stuck a cigarette in his mouth.

"Not bad," he said, giving me another unfriendly glare. I got the message, I was in his turf.

The greaser boys and girls were awful possessive about things like that. It was the reason no one else ever went to The Dingo, it was them all stalking around spitting and swearing, and the girls acting like they'd claw your face off if you so much as looked at one of their leather clad, brawling boyfriends.

"See you later," I said to Sodapop. I was going to have to rush to make it to school on time after stopping by at my sisters.

XXX

At lunch time I was heading for a student newspaper meeting when a fight broke out somewhere between the science lab and the stairwell on the ground floor.

I couldn't see it, just saw the scattered students walking ahead of me merge and push forward. Fight! The word rose up around me. Coming out of dozens of mouths all at once.

I pressed myself up against the wall to avoid being shoved forward and then ran up the stairs.

From a height I could see down into the tight press of bodies in the hallway.

Dallas Winston, the blond haired boy who I saw so rarely at school, despite sharing a home room with, had one of the football players pinned up against a wall.

Winston wasn't the brawniest kid around, not like the football players, but he was mean in a way none of them were.

A couple of Dallas's friends jostled around near him, jeans and flannel shirts, slicked down hair.

"What's going on, Eva?" someone asked at my shoulder.

Pauline who I had English class with was standing beside me.

"Who knows, they're always at each other," I said, turning away from the railing.

"Ohhh," went a gasp, and Pauline fell into step beside me.

"Did you see that? I think Winston just broke Bob's nose! Looks awful."

"Bad luck Cherry," I said, and she giggled.

"I know, he's so good looking too. Well I don't know how Dallas Winston and his friends haven't been kicked out for good already!"

"Guess he will be now," I said. "See you in class."

Donny, James and Nancy were already sitting at a table in the otherwise empty class room when I walked in.

"Sorry I'm late," I said. "I was held up by a fight in the hallway."

"Oh, who was it?" asked Nancy, who wrote the gossip column as well as the advice columns. I didn't see why she bothered as fast as rumor circulated and changed, by the time it took her to type it out it was already old news.

"Dallas Winston and Bob the football player," I said.

"No surprise," Donny snorted. "He's a mean son of a bitch."

"Maybe that's his problem," James joked.

"Well actually, Nancy said, "You know that boy he knocks around with, Johnny Cade?"

We all nodded.

"Well," Nancy said, leaning forward on the table. "I heard a bunch of soc's beat Johnny up real bad last weekend. Maybe that's what they were fighting over."

"I'll bet that Johnny Cade gave just as good as he got," Donny said.

I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. I was sure Donny had never been any closer to a fight than I had.

"Four on one I hear," Nancy said.

"I wouldn't believe anything Winston or Cade say," Donny said, and I was inclined to agree with him on that.

I didn't have much time for the football playing boys and the way they acted like they were kings of the school, but the greasers sure weren't any better, smoking and spitting in corridors.

"What's their problem with each other anyway?" James asked. "Apart from the money thing I mean."

"I think that is the whole problem isn't it?" I commented.

Donny tapped his pen against his pad.

"Why don't you go and find out, Richards?" he said to me.

"Why? What does it matter to the rest of us? Besides having to watch them fight in the hallway."

"An article, Eva. An article about the rivalry between the soc's and the greasers."

I leaned forward in my chair. "Well, I was thinking about an article on school funding. Do you know the sports department gets allocated twice as much as the science department?"

Donny stared at me.

"Bo-ring," Nancy groaned. "No one cares about that."

"Well no one cares about the soc's and greasers either, besides themselves."

"You want to be a real journalist don't you?" Donny said. "How about a report on a link between poverty and juvenile crime. Your father's on the force isn't he? Ask him to access their records for you."

"He won't do that," I said.

He tapped his pen and kept looking at me.

"Sounds good," he said. "Make it about 3,000 words, get some photo's to go with it. Some interviews from each side. Good stuff, Eva."

"Sure, Donny, ok," I said, but he was already onto the next thing.

"Nancy, what have you got planned?"

"How about a spread on swim wear?" Nancy said.

"Damn, I approve that," James said with enthusiasm. Donny snickered.

"Not on models, silly," Nancy said, giggling at them.

I turned over to a fresh leaf in my pad. Stared at the blank page with my pen paused above it.

I thought of Johnny glaring at me in the DX, Dallas and Robert throwing punches in the hallway. All the mindless hate. How on earth was I going to write about that?


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: I've written a bit ahead so can do a couple of quick updates. Thanks for the comments!

* * *

At home that afternoon I was sitting at the kitchen table with a coke and a still blank note pad.

Trying to come up with a plan, I scrawled the names of the soc's I knew of. Bob Sheldon. Cherry. The guy who hung around with Bob. Starting with them seemed less daunting than approaching any of the greasers.

I sighed and chewed on the end of my pen. I was pretty sure if I went and asked Dallas Winston why he hated soc's he'd laugh, or ignore me. If I asked Bob he'd point out the greasers criminal records, the way they got mouthy in class or started fights in the halls.

The phone rang and I got up to grab it.

"Hi, Eva," my sister Belinda said. "Is mom around?"

"She's asleep," I said.

"At this time?"

"Headache," I said, twisting the phone cord in my fingers.

"Well, I want her to babysit Saturday morning. Can you ask her when she gets up? I want to get my hair done for Tommy coming home next week."

"I'll ask her," I said.

"How are you anyway? You got a boyfriend yet?"

She must be bored if she was wanting to make conversation with me.

"Now what would I go and do that for?" I asked in reply. Something jogged in my memory. "Belinda, didn't that greaser Two Bit Matthews take you out on a date once?"

She gave a soft laugh. "He did. What you made you think of that?"

"Just saw him at school today. Can you believe he's still at school?"

"I believe it. We only went out the one time. He was fun, but he didn't want to go steady. Not with just the one girl anyway." She laughed again, shushed her baby.

"He was worried dad might arrest him at the door when he turned up," she added.

I remembered him standing in the doorway, shaking hands with my father. I hadn't paid him much mind.

"What did dad say about it?"

My sister paused for a moment. She rustled around, maybe making the baby a bottle.

"You know what? He told me some of those soc boys probably get picked up by the cops just about as much as the greasers, but it's just seen as teenage mischief for them, said most of the time they just get warned and let go."

I grabbed my pad again. Wrote down what she'd just said. Maybe I could credit it to, "A Tulsa law enforcement officer."

I was pretty sure my father wouldn't want to be on record as saying anything like that.

"He didn't mind Two Bit taking you out?"

"Well he wasn't happy about it. Only thing he said was we weren't to go to The Dingo."

It was off limits to me too, but I'd never had reason to go there either. It wasn't someplace you would go unless you were with them.

"Did you?" I asked her.

"We went to the Nightly Double. He took me to the Dingo for a coke after, but we didn't stay long. Two Bit was sure he'd be arrested if he brought me home after curfew."

"What was it like?"

"It was wild, I could understand why we're not allowed there," she said. I could hear the smile in her voice. Belinda always liked doing what she wasn't supposed to. It didn't get her far though.

"You know a hood called Tim Shepard?" she continued. "He was my year at school. Real bad news."

"I've heard of him," I said.

"Well him and this guy, Dallas, had a huge fight in the middle of the place. I swear they were about to kill each other. Two Bit was laughing. And then not ten minutes later they were sitting down having a cigarette together."

"What was the fight about?"

"Game of cards, according to Two Bit."

"I thought they were all on the same side," I said.

"Oh, no, I didn't really get that impression," Belinda said. "I guess they just gang up against the socs ... I got to go, the baby need's his nap."

After she hung up I got up from the table and grabbed my car keys.

If I was going to get this report in for the next issue I had to get started.

XXX

The evening sun was low over the school field. I pulled up in the car park near the chain link fence and looked over. The football team were winding up their afternoon practice. I knew they finished at six due to once drawing the short straw and being sent to write up first practice when season started.

Donny always covered the games, much as he talked with contempt about the football players I'd seen how he loved to stand beside them after the game, trade hand shakes and high fives, laugh at their jokes.

We didn't do all the practices, just the first, to list the team, and let the coach give an interview which was supposed to invoke school spirit.

They'd jostled around me at the first practice, yelling out, each hoping to see himself quoted in the paper.

This time none of them even looked my way as I headed toward the gate where they would file out of.

They walked off the field in a loose group. Bob Sheldon was at the back with a friend in step beside him.

I looked past the others straight at him. Caught his eye and waved to get his attention.

He had his shirt off, winding it around his hands. His friend beside him nudged him and said something low by his ear. Bob grinned, then looked at me and his expression changed, became softer, friendlier. He could turn on the charm on a dime. His nose looked just fine but one eye was shadowed by a bruise.

"Hi, Eva," he said, stopping beside me.

I was surprised he knew my name, even though I'd spoken to him at the first practice. I didn't expect him to remember.

"Hi Bob," I said.

"You writing about us again?"

"Yeah, if you have a minute?"

The other one folded his arms across his chest and looked at me. I tried to remember his name.

"So, you want to talk about the game this Friday? Usually it's the skinny guy isn't it?"

"That's Donny, yeah. I'm actually writing about different groups at school. I was thinking about how the football team unites everyone."

I wanted to choke on my own words, but I could see they liked them.

"Right," Bob agreed. "People like having something to get behind."

I nodded. Thinking again of Tim Shepard and his gang. The greasers and the soc's. Maybe there was a sports analogy somewhere in it after all.

"As the team captain, do feel you represent the school as well as the team?"

"Of course," he said. "I mean, really the school comes first. Doesn't it Randy?"

He looked at his friend. I glanced at Randy to check he agreed before scribbling it down.

"Do you think all the students feel like you represent them?"

"Yeah," Bob said, his gaze shifting to somewhere behind me. "You nearly done here, Eva?"

I turned for a quick glance at what else was grabbing his attention. His girlfriend Cherry had pulled into the parking lot and was getting out of her car.

As soon as he saw her it was like I became invisible, but I stepped back into his line of sight and tried again.

"Do you think the greasers feel part of it too? I know you had a disagreement with a few of them today."

I had to get to the point before he walked off to join Cherry.

He glanced at Randy then frowned at me.

"Can't get on with everyone, but I try."

He grinned again. Stepped around me.

I followed him out to the car park.

"Do you have a personal grudge with Dallas Winston?"

Bob chuckled. "Dallas Winston got a grudge with the whole world."

Cherry smiled at him as he approached her. Her red hair falling over a sky blue sweater. She was one of those girls you couldn't ever imagine waking up with her hair sticking out everywhere, banging her shins as she stumbled to the bathroom.

"People say you don't like the greasers because they live on the North side, because they're poor."

I had his attention again, or a sliver of it at least. He turned back over his shoulder as he closed the last meters between him and his girlfriend.

"I don't like those boys because they're a bunch of hoods, and they start trouble just as soon as they walk out of their front door."

He stepped up to Cherry, bent to kiss her on the cheek and then turned back to me.

"You can put that in your paper if anyone's not clear."

He slung an arm around Cherry's shoulders, and she flashed a bright yet bland smile at me to hide the fact she had no idea who I was and why I was talking to her boyfriend.

"Eva Richards," I supplied. "I'm just putting together a report for the school paper."

"Great," she said, smile in place still. "About the football team?"

"Not exactly, it's a about different social groups at the school. How they interact."

"Sounds interesting," Cherry said, the same smile plastered across her face.

The lowering sun glinted off the side of her car. I wondered if Bob wasn't standing there if she would say anything worthwhile.

"I'm trying to get the views of a lot of different people, if you have time," I said.

Her smile dropped off a little.

"I'm really busy at the moment. I mean, I'd love to if I could."

She held her car keys toward Bob and he took them, climbed into the drivers seat of the Corvette.

"See you, Eva," he said.


	3. Chapter 3

A/N: Thanks for the reviews I love to hear what you think about the story.

* * *

The next evening I met Donny by the football field to watch the Friday night game. The car park was full so I'd parked down on the road and walked up. Groups of teenagers were filing through the gates into the grounds.

The stands already looked full, the big lights shining down over the field blotted out the sky behind it.

Donny was standing with one hand against the wire fence, gazing through it to the field.

"How's everything?" I asked him.

"Nothing to report so far," he said.

I stood beside him, looked where he was looking.

The team were out there doing their warm ups. The cheerleaders in a line down one side, looking relaxed, chatting to each other.

"How about you?" he added.

"I forgot to bring a magazine to read."

I didn't care for football. But Donny insisted I should come along. He said I could see how the greasers and soc's interacted outside of school.

"Why don't you write it since you're so interested?" I'd complained to him, but here I was.

"Good, you can help write the game report then," he said.

We went through the gate and walked around to the stands. We passed a group of greasers standing near the fence line, Sodapop Curtis and Two Bit and Steve, a couple of girls with them. Evie I knew, but not the blond girl holding Sodapop's hand.

Steve had a cigarette hanging out his mouth, Two Bit a bottle of amber liquid in one hand. He took a sip and then shoved it into the inside pocket of his jacket. When he saw me watching him he grinned, winked.

I smiled back before I could stop myself, bit my lip and looked away from him. With their leather jackets and slouching stances, the drift of smoke across their tough expressions, they didn't really look like they were there to cheer on the football team. They looked like they were there to start a fight, just like Bob had said.

After the game Donny and I stayed seated, him scribbling notes while I watched people scrambling down from the stands, heading toward the gate.

"Damnit, Eva, did you see who passed the ball to Randy before he touched down?"

"Guy with blond hair, does that help?"

"Huh. No."

I watched the mingling people near the gate. Sometime soon after the game had started I'd looked around for Sodapop and his friends and they weren't standing there anymore.

"I'm gonna go get a comment, you want to come over?"

I shook my head. "I'll meet you outside."

I stood alone while kids moved in a stream past me, watching out for Sodapop and his friends. I ran over in my head what I was going to say if I saw them.

"Are you here to support the team?" I could ask. It could be a good lead in, given the rumor of a group of soc's beating up Johnny Cade. I didn't know if I really believed that though.

"... always carries a blade now."

I turned my head at a snatch of conversation near me. Two Bit was walking by, a younger boy with greased back hair talking to him. The boy was younger than me, couldn't have been any more than fourteen.

"Good job, he should," Two Bit said. His tone was grim.

"Darry ain't even letting me out alone after dark now," the boy said.

I tried to fall in behind them to keep listening but a group of girls moved in between us, drowning out their words.

"... deal to them..." I caught before they were too far away for me to continue eaves dropping.

I only watched their backs as they carried on toward the exit to be lost among the crowd.

I'd never thought some of the boys I passed by at school might be walking the hallways armed with weapons.

XXX

On Saturday afternoon my mother emerged from her room with a hand pressed to her head, and I offered to go out and babysit my nephew in her place.

Driving through the North side held an appeal it never had before. Usually I just went straight to my sisters place and straight out again, but I was thinking about the photos Donny wanted for the article.

My mother was sitting outside on the porch, looking over the garden. She hadn't gotten out in it so much as she used to, the roses were overgrown, weeds emerging.

She was sipping tea, half her face hidden behind large sunglasses.

"I'm heading off, mom," I said.

"Well be careful over there. Make sure you keep the doors locked."

"It's the middle of the day."

"Too many types up to no good out there," my mother murmured, leaning her head back toward the sun. "It's no place for your sister to be living, especially with that boy gone."

Her husband was always 'that boy' to our mother. My parents wanted her to move back home when he deployed, but she wouldn't hear of it.

My sister had too much pride, even if it meant living in a rundown house in the worst part of town.

In Belinda's lounge room she had a photo of herself and her husband on their wedding day above the fireplace. She was dressed in white and smiling, holding a bouquet of flowers across her stomach where the baby was a swelling bump.

Her husband didn't own a suit so he was wearing his army uniform. He was just turned twenty, young and handsome, the two of them looking like the beginning of a dream instead of the end.

"You looking forward to seeing Tommy again?" I asked her.

She was in the kitchen, making up a bottle for the baby in case he woke while she was gone.

"Of course. I can't wait for him to meet little Tommy."

"How long's he home for?"

"Not long enough," she said as she came back through to the lounge room.

"Now if he wakes you just warm that up in a pan of water and give it to him."

"Yeah, sure."

I looked out the window across the quiet street, the little wooden houses with small patches of grass outside. Despite my mother's warning the door was unlocked, the windows open to let the breeze in.

"You ever worry about gangs out here? Do any live near you?"

My sister turned a piercing stare onto me.

"What? You investigating a crime, Miss reporter?"

Her tone was scathing, but I brushed it off. She was only jealous because she had thrown away her own chance of going to college and having a career.

"Sort of. I'm doing a report ..."

She listened with the same hard expression while I explained the assignment I'd been given.

"You want my opinion, now that I'm one of them?"

She flipped back her hair. It looked just fine to me even though she was heading to the hairdresser. My sister was always the one who had the boys after her. She could have had anyone or anything.

"No, I just wondered if you notice any trouble with the greasers and all around here, that's all."

She raised her eyebrows.

"You know, people out here are just like people anywhere. Most of them are good people. A lot of them are just going through a hard time. Some of them have never known anything but hard times."

"Hard time, like money wise?"

"Like money, work, bills, some of the woman like me who's men are away, or just walked out and gone."

"What about drugs, alcohol?" I asked, a little warily. I didn't want to offend her again, even though I wasn't sure exactly how I had in the first place.

She nodded.

"Yeah, that too. The couple across the road there are both drunks." She nodded her head at the house with the rusting car parked up outside it.

"You always hear them screaming at each other, at their kid. I've seen the dad drag him outside the house and beat him right in the yard there."

I looked again at the little house, it was silent, no sign of life.

"Hasn't he ever been arrested? Jailed?"

"One night I swear it sounded like he was killing her, the wife. Things smashing and breaking, their poor kid hiding out in that car there, so I called the police to come."

She stopped, shrugged. "Well, when I gave them the address they said they knew the trouble there, they never came."

"Cops never showed up at all? Did you tell dad?"

"I sure won't be telling him," she said. "I'll tell you one thing different in this part of town. People here don't expect the police to help them. I'm starting to see why."

She pulled on sunglasses, picked up her car keys.

"So I take it he didn't kill her then?"

"They're still alive, still fighting. I feel sorry for that boy though. He's got it awful rough."

After she left I walked down the hallway to check on my nephew. He was still sleeping, on his back with his arms thrown out, mouth slightly open. I stood in the doorway for a while watching the light rise and fall of his chest.

Did growing up out here meant he was destined to be someone other than if he'd grown up where my parents lived? Maybe one day he'd grease back his hair and strut around school smoking and being looked down on by the children of the soc's. Put like that the way we thought about the boys and girls from this side of town made no sense. They were only people, good and bad just like everywhere, just like Belinda said.

I went back to the lounge and looked out the window to the street outside, thinking about the photos I wanted to get.

I wondered if Belinda would be offended if I took a photo of the scene from her house. Not that it really mattered. My sister was hardly going to be reading the school paper.

Maybe I'd be able to get Sodapop and some of the guys to pose for me, holding the knives they apparently carried, although there didn't seem much chance of that. I was pretty sure Bob would love to be photographed, but he wasn't the one I wanted.

While I was thinking on it the door to the opposite house swung open. A boy walked out of the house where the cops never turned up.

I stared at him. The boy who had it awful rough. It was Johnny Cade from school.

* * *

A/N; I hope the set up doesn't seem too slow, but from the next chapter there will be more of the guys!


	4. Chapter 4

A/N: Thanks for the reviews so far. This is the last of the pre-written chapters. Worth continuing?

* * *

Johnny Cade walked out to the edge of his front yard. He was wearing a white t shirt and jeans, scuffed sneakers. He ducked his head down and lit a cigarette, blew a line of smoke out and looked down the road.

For a moment I stared at him, thinking of the days he turned up in school with a black eye or fat lip, the days he never turned up at all.

I went back to the kitchen and grabbed a cigarette out of the pack my sister had left on the bench. I walked outside with it, stood by the front door and looked over at Johnny. He was leaning back against the hood of the rusted car.

He didn't notice until I'd crossed the road, then he looked up at me with the same blank expression I'd seen on him at school. If he recognized me he didn't show it.

"Hi, can I borrow your light?"

I didn't often smoke, but it sure was a handy ice breaker at times.

He held a pack of matches toward me without a word.

I lit up, taking a careful puff to avoid coughing, aware of his dark eyes gazing at me.

"Thanks," I said, handing him back the matches. "I'm babysitting my nephew so can't run down the shop, I was hoping I'd see someone having a smoke ..."

His blank expression and silence was unnerving and I found myself talking into it.

"Do you know my sister? Belinda? Her husbands coming back from Vietnam this Wednesday."

"Nah," he said. He flicked ash off the end of his cigarette. It was half finished, in a minute he was probably going to turn and go back inside the house, and this seemed about the best chance I'd have to talk to him alone.

"She used to go to our school. I'm Eva, I've seen you around school."

He was giving me the same impassive stare. As if he thought I was crazy. I half wanted to turn and run back inside, but I tried to recall again what my sister had said about him. Maybe underneath the tough act he was scared too.

"Johnny Cade," he said.

He didn't smile or shake my hand, but it felt like an offering.

"I'm actually doing an assignment for the school paper."

"Yeah, never read it," he said.

Maybe to a boy like him columns on football and fashion and advice on scholarships had about as much to do with his life as life on the moon.

"That's ok, I wouldn't either except I kind of have to."

His mouth turned up a little in one corner.

I felt encouraged and carried on, smoke from the forgotten cigarette curling around my fingers.

"Actually my assignment is writing about the rivalry between you boys from the North side of town and the soc's."

The half smile fell off his face so fast it might have never been expect for how I remembered the unexpected sweetness of it.

"Oh yeah," he said. He flicked his cigarette butt away. Eyes gone hard.

There was nothing to do but carry on.

"I was hoping you'd talk to me about it. I heard you had a run in with some of them."

His jaw clenched, he swung his head back around to look at me.

"It's between us, nothing to do with anyone else."

He jammed his hands in his pockets, his shoulders stiff. I could see the tight anger in him and felt strangely nervous. We were standing out on the street in the sunny afternoon. But the police didn't come out here.

"You know, I already spoke to Bob and Randy. You don't want to give your side too?"

He smiled again, but there was no sweetness in it this time. I felt like a child and him an old man, staring at me out of those still eyes. It made me wonder about what he'd seen, all those nights in the little house with his parents sounding like they were killing each other and no police coming.

The thought made me regret pushing him to talk, I wanted to take it all back, but before I could say anything he did.

"What does anyone care about our side?"

"I do," I said. He was slight still, narrow shoulders and thin wrists coming from the sleeves of his jacket. Looking at him and letting the image of the well fed soc's superimpose there, imagining them swinging their brawny fists at him, made me feel sick.

The fights between the soc's and greasers were something we laughed at, if we thought about it at all, me and my friends and all the people like us who didn't have to worry about being cornered and beaten.

"Must be lonely in your club of one," he said.

"It's why I want to write this, to try and get the other side. All people at school see is you and your friends hanging around together, acting like hoods, looking like you want to make trouble."

Johnny turned at the rumble of a car engine approaching. I followed his gaze and saw an old Ford rounding the street.

Then he turned to look back at me.

"If they think that, what difference does it make? You think we want anyone to feel sorry for us?"

I shook my head, and anything I might have said would have been drowned out by the squeal of breaks as the car hauled up beside Johnny.

Steve Randle was driving, fair haired Dallas Winston was leaning out of the passenger window, arm hanging down along the door.

"Hey, Johnny," he said, but his eyes were on me instead of Johnny.

"You picked yourself up a date, Johnny?"

I felt even more uncomfortable under the hard stares of Dallas and Steve.

"Well jump in, there's plenty of room in the back seat," Dallas said to me.

"She just came over and started talking to me," I heard Johnny mumble as he got in.

Great, it appeared he really had thought I was crazy. If I tried to explain I was only trying to interview him it probably wouldn't help either.

"I just needed a light," I said, since Dallas was still eyeing me.

"Yeah, Johnny not man enough for you? You can get in the front with me then."

He winked, patted a slither of space beside him.

"I'm babysitting, and I wouldn't come even if I wasn't."

Dallas laughed.

"Think your too good for us? You're the one standing on the street on the North side, honey."

Spending a lifetime as a cops daughter let me know well enough not to get in a car with any group of boys I barely knew, but it didn't seem smart to say so. I knew there was no chance they'd talk to me if they knew who my father was, even though he worked in narcotics and had probably never laid eyes on any of them.

"I've got to get back in to my nephew now," I said.

"Another time," Dallas said, and he laughed again. A low chuckle which made me turn away fast. The laugh of someone who didn't really believe he wouldn't always get his way.

XXX

After dinner I went out to the porch where my father was sitting, having a whisky and cigar.

"Hey," I said. I stood beside him, looked over the dusky sky.

"Yes?" he said. My dad wasn't someone who made idle conversation. If you came to see him he expected you had a question he could answer, a problem he could find a solution for.

"That report for the paper I was telling you about, remember?"

"I remember."

"You know some people say police don't go to the North side. Is that true?"

"What do you think?"

He never for a second stopped being a cop.

"I got no reason not to believe it," I said. I couldn't tell him the person was my sister, his daughter.

Belinda had always been his favourite. Even when she got pregnant, he supported her while everyone else looked down on her.

He offered for him and my mom to adopt the baby, raise it like their own, but she and Tommy never even entertained the idea. They had already decided to get married when they broke the news of the baby over dinner one night. My dad just about choked on a piece of steak and mom cried into her salad.

"This going on your report?" he asked me.

"I won't name you," I said.

"No one have great powers of deduction at your school, do they?"

"Honestly, I doubt anyone will even read it," I sighed. "I think all anyone reads is the sport and gossip."

My dad puffed on his cigar, looking across the garden.

"You haven't denied it yet," I pointed out.

He smiled, but it was aimed at the overgrown roses not me.

"Let me guess - they were talking about a domestic?"

"Police don't go to domestics?"

"They do. But you know what happens? You turn up, she cries and screams when you arrest her man. Tells you he didn't do anything wrong. Tells you he never hit her while she's mopping up the blood from her mouth. Won't talk, won't press charges."

I stared at him, held by the image.

He shrugged.

"Violence is an ugly thing, Eva. Especially behind closed doors."

"So you don't do anything?"

"Can't do anything. You can haul him off to jail and she'll bail him first thing in the morning. Next Saturday night he gets home from the bar and there you go again."

"This happens a lot on the North side?"

My father sucked his cigar.

"Happens all over. Money never stopped anyone swinging a fist."

I thought of Dallas and Bob brawling together in the hallway. Arms locked together, scrabbling for the advantage, wanting blood. Yet in everyone's eyes Dallas was the delinquent one.

"But the police would come to the South side?"

"If they got the call, sure," he said. "But the wife of a doctor isn't going to report him for domestic assault."

I chewed my lip. I felt like my eyes had been opened to another world, one my father lived in when he left our house each day, one Johnny Cade and boys like him knew as the only world.


	5. Chapter 5

A/N; Thanks for the reviews on the last chapter, good to know if people are reading the story and what you think.

* * *

On Monday morning Belinda phoned and asked me to come around with milk for the baby.

"Again?" I sighed, and she hung up on me. Guilt chewed at me as I drove across to the North side before school to drop them off to her.

She answered the door in her robe and snatched the milk out of my hand.

"You have no idea what it's like," she said.

I didn't want to either. It was only two days until Tommy got back. I told myself everything would be better for her then. At least our parents wouldn't worry so much about her being in that house by herself with only the baby.

It was after the first bell when I pulled into school. I sat in the car park for a minute, staring toward the empty looking school. Everyone was in class.

Or maybe not everyone. Dallas Winston was standing near the entrance gates, puffing on a cigarette.

I got out of the car and slung my bag over my shoulder. He eyed me as I headed toward the gates. Irritation at my sister was still snapping through me and I squared my shoulders as I approached him.

If I wanted to be a real reporter I had to get used to going up to people, even ones who only went to school as an interlude to prison.

"Hi, Dallas," I said, stopping in front of him.

He smirked at me. "Well I still have no idea who the hell you are."

"Eva Richards," I said.

"Uh huh," he said.

"So, I'm writing an article for the school paper."

I let my words hang, feeling unsure under his bored gaze. The school paper probably held as much interest to him as it did to Johnny.

"Uh huh. You want to get out of here and go for a ride? Yesterdays offer still stands."

He grinned. He looked like he could eat me alive.

Johnny Cade had made me uncomfortable with his dark and silent stare, but Dallas Winston sent a shiver crawling like a spider up my back.

"I've got class, so no. I wanted to talk to you for the article I'm writing, it's about the, uh, conflicts between you and your friends and the socs."

"You want to talk, huh?"

He laced his fingers through the wire fence, leaning his body away from it and towards me. I resisted the urge to step back.

"Yes, like here. At school. Maybe at lunch time."

"And what's the point of this article, huh? What the hell would you know about me and my friends?"

"That is the point really, to get your side."

"You're crazy if you think any of us are gonna talk to you about us and the soc's."

Dallas Winston might not have known who I was, but everyone else knew him. He was one of those guys who's reputation was even bigger than him. I couldn't think of anyone better to be interviewed for my report.

"You know, I bet a lot of people would really like to hear your take on it," I said, even though I wasn't sure he was a guy who'd fall for his ego being stroked. He seemed another breed entirely from Donny and the other boys I was used to hanging around with.

All the ropey muscles stood out in his arms as he leaned forward on the fence again, stretching them out behind him.

"I'll tell you about my record. Ask me how old I was the first time I got arrested, go on."

That grin again. It wasn't anything which made him look nicer.

"How old were you?" I asked, biting down a mix of nerves and impatience. I didn't want him to start talking about his arrest history. I wanted him to agree to sit down at lunch and talk about his feelings on the soc's.

"Ten," he said, as if it was an accomplishment.

I tried not to look shocked, it would only confirm what he already thought, I knew nothing of his life.

"Didn't know they made cuffs so small," I said, keeping my tone light.

"Don't in fact, I slipped 'em off in the back of the car."

He let go of the fence to demonstrate for me, twisting his hands together.

"So were you arrested for fighting?" I asked, trying to get back around to where I was wanting this to go. Though I couldn't help but be intrigued by the idea of him in jail at ten.

I watched his hard expression, trying to imagine him a young child, in handcuffs, in a cell.

"Nah, joyriding," he said. "Buddy of mine was driving. Ran straight into a lamppost while the fuzz was after us and we all got picked up."

"What happened to you?"

"Nothing but a couple of bruises. Got off easy."

"No, I mean, with the law?"

"Done two months in a boys home. Wasn't any worse than being with the old man."

His smile was cold, eyes eager. Acceptance in his tone, as if his life had never been anything other than what he expected.

"Mr Winston!"

I turned at the unmistakable tone of a teacher. It was the deputy principal Mr Harding.

"Sir?" Dallas responded, not moving from his spot against the fence. His tone of voice was the same he might have used to cuss someone out.

"Winston get to class, I'm writing you up for detention."

Dallas made a slow act of adjusting his jeans and jacket before heading toward the school. He stopped a few steps in, turned and faced me.

"You want to learn a thing or two about greasers you meet me right here after school."

He turned around again without waiting for a reply.

I dragged my eyes from his back and looked at Mr Harding.

"Name?"

"Eva Richards."

"Eva Richards, why are you loitering outside the school with Dallas Winston?"

"I was just on my way to class," I said.

"Well get to it then."

"Yes, sir," I said.

Dallas was already far ahead of me with his strutting walk as I headed across the courtyard toward the main building. I watched him disappear around the corner instead of going inside. Like Pauline, I wondered how he hadn't been expelled yet. Mostly, I wondered if I had the nerve to meet him after school.

XXX

"You want to go out with Dallas Winston?" Donny demanded as we sat eating lunch together, his tone incredulous.

"Not go out," I corrected, "meet."

"You think Dallas Winston hangs around school one second longer than he has to?"

"Donny, I'm not going anywhere with him," I said irritably. "He's agreed to talk to me for the article, remember the one you assigned to me?"

"No way, Eva," he said, shaking his head. "No way are you doing that, he's trouble."

"Lucky I don't need your permission then."

"What, just telling me so I know where to start hunting when you never show up to school tomorrow?"

"Donny you're being crazy. Anyway aren't we supposed to be non-biased, what makes you think he's any more dangerous than Bob besides coming from the wrong side of town?"

"It's not about where he lives."

I sighed, wondering how I'd found myself in the position of being Dallas's defender. Just standing near the guy put me on edge.

"Everyone knows him at school. They'd read the article just to see what he says, you know they would."

He frowned and dunked a chip in sauce, poked it toward me.

"Just don't let him take you to The Dingo or any place like that."

"We are not going anywhere," I repeated.

XXX

It didn't occur to me, after a day spent thinking on what was going to happen when I met with Dallas, that what would happen is he wouldn't show.

I stood outside the gates, trying not to be too obvious as I scanned the groups of greasers lingering outside around their cars. I saw his friends Steve and Two Bit but no sign of Dallas.

I was most annoyed about the fact I would have to tell Donny he hadn't done anything bad to me because he hadn't shown at all.

His reflection appeared in the window of my car as I unlocked the door, walking up behind me.

I turned around quickly before he could think he was going to surprise me.

"You leaving without me? Thought we were gonna talk."

He stood in front of me, unlit cigarette dangling from his mouth, that smirk on his face.

"Thought you'd changed your mind," I said.

He walked around the side of the car and opened up the passenger door.

"What are you doing?" I asked him, suspicion lurching in me. I had no doubt the bright afternoon and crowds of students wouldn't stop Dallas Winston doing anything he wanted to do.

"Ain't got no car," he said. He hopped into the seat and pulled the door shut, wound the window down and hung his arm over the door as easily as if he'd been invited in.

I yanked open the drivers door and leant down to look in at him.

"We're not going anywhere. We can talk here."

He pulled out a pack of matches and lit his cigarette, dragged on it casually. Unmovable.

I stared at him for a minute while he ignored me, then I dropped into the drivers seat. Pulled a notebook out of my bag and propped it against the steering wheel to prove my point.

He looked across at me, grinning around the cigarette in his mouth.

"You wanna see how the rest of us live?"

"Yeah," I said slowly, doubt swinging in me. Maybe I did have to go and see for myself like I had that day when I stood with Johnny outside his house. Maybe I could get a photo of the greasers standing outside the Dingo, get a quote from Dallas Winston I could use as the tagline to my article.

He tapped ash out of the window.

"Sure ain't going to see anything sitting outside school."

I slowly lowered the notebook and pushed the key into the ignition as he watched me. I wondered how it seemed like everything was going exactly the way he wanted it to.


	6. Chapter 6

Thanks for the comments on the story so far.

* * *

Dallas smoked in silence as I headed toward the North side.

"So, where are we going?" I asked after a few minutes.

I tried to keep the apprehension out of my voice. I tried to remember this was what I had wanted, for Dallas Winston to agree to talk.

"I'll tell you," he said. "Just pull over here first."

There was a little stretch of shops. A liquor store, a drug store, a Laundromat. I pulled up to the kerb and he jumped out. I was surprised to see him head into the liquor store. I'd figured he was just going to get more cigarettes.

A second later he strolled out of the store, hands in his pockets. He was getting into the passenger seat when the grilled door to the liquor shop flew open. A man rushed out, yelling "stop!".

Dallas slammed the car door shut.

"Drive, move!" he ordered.

"What?" I stared at him.

Dallas punched down the door lock and started winding up his window as the man approached.

"I saw you, I saw you, you thief!" I heard him saying.

"What's he meaning, Dallas?" I asked, frozen.

"Goddammit girl, just drive!" Dallas said, sounding amused.

"What did you just do?" demanded, forgetting for a moment to be scared of him and scared of the law instead. I didn't even want to imagine what my father would say if he found out.

"Drive while you talk would you?" he said.

His tone was so casual it took a moment for me to register a voice yelling behind us. The shop keeper was running out of his shop and toward the car, something wielded in one hand. I didn't wait for him to get closer to see what it was. Fear booted in over my conscious and I planted my foot down on the accelerator.

Dallas settled back in his seat as I hauled out onto the main road.

"Ease back now," he said. "I'll take us down a couple of side streets. Nothing to worry about."

He unscrewed the cap from a bottle of whisky and drank some straight from the bottle. Held it toward me as if I might want to share.

I finally got over my shock enough to speak again.

"I can't believe you just did that to me!" I managed to get out. "I'm an accessory to a crime, I'm your get away driver!"

I didn't know if I was about to cry or laugh.

Dallas laughed. "I thought you wanted to see how greasers live."

"I just wanted you to tell me about it!"

"You don't wanna know how it is to be on the wrong side of the law. Even when you ain't done nothing wrong?"

"That what you think it's like for you? I mean you just robbed a shop so it's not helping your side of the argument."

"What am I, the fucking greaser representative? You think Johnny ever broken a law in his life?"

"Of course," I blurted out without thinking. I bit my lip. "I mean, hasn't he?"

"Nah, he ain't. They ain't all Dallas Winston."

He grinned. Despite his words he seemed pretty proud of the name he had for himself.

I looked over at him.

"You can get out right now, I'm not driving you around to commit any more crimes."

"Too bad, I was gonna hit the bank next.

"It's like you think this is a game?"

"Never that," he said, leaning his head back against the seat. For a second I caught a hint of weariness under his hard and mocking expression, but just as fast it was gone again.

"Why do you do it?" I asked.

He drank again from the bottle.

"Why not?" he asked by way of reply. "Because I can. Because I want to. What, ain't that shit you can write in your school paper?"

"For fun?" I asked.

"Sure is," he said. "Turn down here now."

I slowed and looked warily at where he was indicating. Across the railway line I could see a double story building, bleak and shabby looking. There were a couple of old cars in the dusty yard, two boys outside on the front steps smoking and watching us come.

"You can pull over here," Dallas said.

I stopped on the kerb without pulling into the lot. I looked at the building again, then back to him.

"Now what?" I asked cautiously. I wondered what illegal thing he could do here. I couldn't even tell what sort of place it was. The grilled windows and unlit sign above the door looked bar-like, but the boys outside were too young to be of drinking age.

"Now what? I'm going to have a drink."

He hopped out the car and slammed the door shut. Leaned back in the still open window to add, "Thanks for the ride."

I stared after him as he sauntered toward the building, dust kicking up under his boots, the bottle dangling from one hand.

"You shit," I said under my breath, and anger at him drove me out of the car and after him before I had time to think it through.

I walked up behind him, and the two boys on the steps kept watching. Nerves shot back through the anger.

The other two boys looked like real hoods, slicked back hair and cold eyes. I regretted setting after Dallas but now it was too late to turn back.

"Think your girlfriend ain't finished with you, Dally," the younger boy said.

Dallas turned on his heel.

"The hell you doing?"

My determination to get the interview wavered before the three of them. I only wanted to leave.

"Can we finish talking tomorrow then?" I asked weakly. I folded my arms across my chest as the other two boys eyed me up and down openly.

"Ain't Sylvia trouble enough for you, Dally?" asked the older boy.

"Just 'cause you ain't got one girl let alone two."

The younger boy chuckled and then glanced at the older one and shut up.

"I'm not his girlfriend!" I said.

The younger boy grinned again. He didn't look so scary as Dallas and the older boy.

"You really pissed her off, man," said the older boy.

"You piss off, Tim," said Dallas.

I looked up quickly at the boy he'd just spoken to. Tim Shepard? He had an even worse reputation than Dallas. I'd almost relaxed a bit as they smiled and joked about girl trouble but the feeling fled fast.

Yet still for a minute I imagined getting Tim Shepard to talk to me. In my minds eye I put a frame around the three boys, thinking what a photo it would be.

Tim was leaning forward, arms resting across the railings. The younger boy was sitting up on top of it, grinning around a cigarette in his mouth.

And Dallas standing in front of them, staring at me with a cold gaze.

"I'm all done talking," he said. "But you can have a drink if you want."

He held the stolen bottle toward me again. Showed his teeth in what passed for his smile.

The door slammed open with a bang before I could respond to Dallas.

A slim girl stood in the doorway. She was wearing tiny shorts and a tight shirt, tousled hair down over her shoulders.

"Dally," she said, leaning against the door frame. "I was starting to think you must have been picked up by the fuzz."

"Nah, he just been at school," Tim Shepard said. Obviously he found the fact of Dallas going to school amusing, and Dallas scowled at him.

Dallas held the bottle toward her, the same way he'd offered it to me. Unlike me, she came down off the porch and took it from his hand.

She tilted her head back and drank from the bottle like a boy would, her necklace glinting in the sun, hair shining. Dally was watching her, his eyes eager. I wondered if she was his girlfriend.

She lowered the bottle again. Then she looked at me.

"Well who the hell are you?"

"Now that ain't very friendly," the younger boy said. Idle amusement in his expression, as if he were watching a TV show.

If she was Dally's girlfriend they sure were a good match.

"Hi, I'm Eva," I said.

Her blue eyes narrowed. She was beautiful, not like Cherry or even my sister, but in a wild and careless way. Hair in unbrushed ringlets. No make up.

"I don't care what your name is. I mean, who are you?"

I looked at Dally for some reason, as if he might give me an indication of what I should do.

"She gave me a ride out. She's been real helpful," Dallas said, unhelpfully. I could hear the mocking in his voice. I couldn't believe I had really thought he was going to let me interview him. I felt stupid.

"Oh, Eva who's real helpful," she said. A taunt in her lilting tone.

I didn't want to open my mouth about the school paper in front of her. I'd never seen her before, I was sure she didn't go to our school. She looked older than I'd ever be in the same way Johnny had.

"Eva, this is Sylvia who's a real bitch," the younger boy said. He grinned as he said it, and to my surprise Sylvia laughed. She looked back at him, gave him an indulgent smile, as if he were her little brother. Maybe he was.

"Eva, this is Curly who's a real mouthy little brat," Sylvia said. I looked at him quickly then. Curly Shepard was another name I knew. Infamous for being Tim Shepard's brother.

Sylvia spun around and headed back toward the building. She gave Curly a good shove in the chest as she passed him and he slipped right off the railing and onto the wooden deck with a thud.

I winced, but Dallas and Tim laughed. Curly was back on his feet in a second, apparently unharmed.

"See, what'd I tell you," he said to me. His smile was bright, cocky. He looked young and full of life compared to the tough demeanor of his stony eyed brother beside him and Dallas staring after Sylvia.

"She took my drink," he said, setting off after her.

"Shit, you better be fast Dally," Curly said.

The door shut behind Dallas and for a long second we all stood in silence. I was aware there was really nothing at all out here. Nothing but a big empty looking building and empty railway tracks and an empty dirt parking lot. Nothing but me and the Shepard brothers.

Tim Shepard leaned forward on the railing.

"So, Eva. What are you doing here?"


End file.
